Shadowing

Shadowing builds on that you shadow another person in their work on one or several occasions. Doing it from a structure that secures the learning through preparation, perspective and reflection. In the choice of the person to shadow, it is only your own imagination and ambition that sets the limits for what is possible.

Following another manager in his everyday life can generate new energy but also give distance to your own leadership. With a change of perspective there is the opportunity to deepen ones understanding for the complexity of leadership.

A successful shadowing builds however on prepared reflections, research and a clear agreement with the person you are to shadow regarding for example learning objectives and feedback.

Shadowing has many different areas of use in addition to leadership development programs and individual coaching:• The coach shadows the coachee• The protégé shadows the mentor and vice versa.• The manager shadows another manager within/outside the organisation• The coach shadows the CEO in connection with leadership groups development.• A new employee shadows an experienced colleague in the organisation. In a conflict situation the different parties can shadow each other for enhanced understanding of each other’s context.

In MiL Institute we don’t see learning as a goal in itself but as a consequence of doing the right things together with the right people. The goal is to contribute to reaching results, to get the job done with quality, efficiency and in an innovative way. As a consequence of our way to contribute, at the same time we create space for learning about leadership, change and strategy, etc. The difference is that we let the task, the work that has to be done, come to the fore. Not as a motor or as an arena for learning, but as the goal for the operation. One can say that leadership development becomes a side effect of a job that has to be done anyway.

The completion workshop offers a solution to this kind of complex questions that are dependent of a coordinated operation of different competences and parallel businesses. Questions that often risk suffering and being dragged out due to permanent interruptions and colliding priorities. In the completion workshop we gather the key persons that are needed to answer the question under the same roof and give them conditions to get the job done.

Catch management is the result of a cooperation between MiL and Volvo Cars and an example of how ARL is a living practise that takes shape at meetings between MiL and the unique needs and possibilities of the organisation. The design developed as a tailored solution to a situation where a more customised leadership programme would not have been realizable due to time pressure.

Within the frame of MiL’s tailored leadership development programmes we have designed and carried out several different real and strategic business projects. The starting point is that the most effective way to learn about leadership will come from working with an important issue for a real customer where the participants themselves are responsible for analysis, strategic decisions and implementation.

Travelling out in the world to see how others create a revitalizing draft in the development work. However, you don’t have to travel to foreign counties to get new perspectives to your own business. Depending on the underlying purpose, the journey can either go to something familiar, which means a deepening of what you already know or to something unknown, which gives new perspectives.

A day’s work is an exercise where the participants during a day performed real assignments in reality. The assignments are tailored after the specific development needs of the participants. Characteristic for a day’s work is that the leader reaches important development area, through a relatively simple and cost effective design. She expands her comfort zone and becomes more aware of her untapped potential to develop actorship/entrepreneurship as well as her potential to design learning processes for others.

Shadowing

Shadowing builds on that you shadow another person in their work on one or several occasions. Doing it from a structure that secures the learning through preparation, perspective and reflection. In the choice of the person to shadow, it is only your own imagination and ambition that sets the limits for what is possible.

MiL Walkabout is an exercise that is implemented mainly outdoors during approx. 4-5 hours, where reality (the terrain) meets the personally perceived reality of the participants (the map). This exercise is not physically challenging, but builds on the fact that everyone independently of the physical conditions can contribute to the group successfully solving their task.

In the Cake Factory the participants are challenged to start, run and develop a factory. This suits larger groups that want to move quickly in a short time in a specific issue. The Cake Factory is an experience based organisational game where the participants are challenged together to start, run and develop a cake factory, so that it becomes efficient, competent, quality aware, responsive and creative. All of this takes place in a demanding environment with realistic pressure from competitors, suppliers, clients and owners.

Developing your leadership through taking responsibility for a real and urgent business project has from the start been a powerful and effective tool for the way MiL works with leadership development. During the years we have also developed a shorter, daylong version under the name of mini-project.

The Experiment workshop stimulates us to a mental breakthrough, as the exercise forces the participants to communicate in other way than with words. It is surprising how much that is expressed in a vision that is materialized as an (art) installation. The installation encourages association and interpretations that regularly says more than what the creator meant, but that still has great importance for him/her. The Experiment workshop is a forgiving environment where the participants are both supported and challenged to break new grounds.